For four decades, Ira Sachs has been documenting queer life in New York, highlighting the artists and iconoclasts whose work gives the city a vibrant, rebellious edge.
“The Man I Love,” which Sachs says is one of his most personal films, adds another addition to the canon. Set in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS crisis, the film follows Jimmy George, a downtown performer who is on the verge of dying from the virus but tries to fulfill his final role. Sachs, 60, drew on his own experiences at the time, beginning his career in theater and film.
“I moved to New York in 1988, and the city was dark but vibrant at the same time,” Sachs says. “People knew they could be next. Death was all around them. But it led to an explosion of creativity. And this film is about what it means to live a creative life and what it means to work. That’s the theme of most of my films.”
The Man I Love premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where director Sachs and Rami Malek’s central performance as Jimmy garnered some of the strongest reviews of their careers. Sacks gave an interview to Variety during the production of The Man I Love and on the eve of its premiere.
At the time of its release, “The Man I Love” was described as a musical fantasy. Is that how you describe the finished film?
That’s not the movie I made.
Is that the movie you set out to make?
There was one fantasy scene that didn’t appear in the movie. In the end, it became a drama with a lot of music. One of the producers I worked with said he had never seen a film change like this in the process of making it. That doesn’t make sense to me. Because all my movies feel like that. Every film is in the process of being completed and therefore, in a way, defining itself. The first short story I wrote, “Lady,” was abstract, and when I started writing it, someone asked me, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “You’ll never know what it is until you see it finished. It’ll become clear.”
Is “The Man I Love” drawn from your own life?
When I started making the film, I intended to make a biography, but I ended up making an autobiography. It’s very personal.
Who is your agent? Rami’s character, Jimmy George, or the men around him: Dennis (Tom Sturridge) or Vincent (Luther Ford)?
Well, I’m still alive, so I’m not Jimmy. You could say Vincent. In a way, this movie is about survival. It also has to do with memory. It comes from a completely different place than my experience of knowing people, connecting with people, and being in love with people who have had terrible illnesses. I had a boyfriend who had AIDS. I was living in a time when AIDS not only existed, but created an intense atmosphere of both fear and possibility in New York. I made a film that proves creativity as a form of survival. Art and art-making are vital to life and breathing. In that sense, I am very connected to Jimmy.
In what ways was New York in the 1980s a time of potential? The death toll from AIDS makes being gay seem like a scary, almost apocalyptic time.
That being said, there was also a great deal of creativity. I came to this city at a young age, so everything was right in front of me. Our intention was to make a film that proves the fact that one lives to the end. People don’t actively die, they actively live, then what is life? The first time I explained this movie to someone, I was probably in my early 50s, and I said this is a movie about what you do with the time you have left. It’s a compressed, dramatic version of that intellectual training, and it’s also specific, as it shows the horror of the AIDS epidemic. But in the ’70s and ’80s, an artistic flourish came out of the East Village. Even now, I continue to run relying on the smoke from that time. I am very grateful to have been able to participate in it.
Do people think about that era enough? I feel like some people in the gay community remember this in a way. Because now we have Prep and AIDS is not so much of a public health crisis in this country.
Historical amnesia is common but not unique to homosexuals. It’s like a line about war – the winner is the one you remember. When you hear stories about AIDS, it’s usually from people who survived. Many people I knew well back then have disappeared. Fewer and fewer of us humans can tell that story.
One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Jimmy returns to his hometown for his parents’ anniversary party. He looks very uncomfortable in his suit, like a fish out of water. He’s basically striding around New York City, which is pretty impressive.
There is often a huge gap between the person you will become and the person you used to be. The family you create for yourself and the family you were born into. Sometimes if you imagine you’re in a room full of New York City people, your contemporaries, and there’s a grandmother to everyone’s left, and all the grandmothers around the table, what a strange gathering of people there was. None of them have any connection to each other. When I think about my own friends, we all changed upon arriving in New York. It shaped us.
Why did you come up with Rami Malek for the role of Jimmy?
From “Mr.” robot. “In that series, I was drawn to his acting in such a natural and easy-going way that you couldn’t see the beginning or end of a sentence. He is also very unique. Rami is a star and has a magnetic force that holds the movie together.
Jimmy performs some musical numbers. What was it like filming them?
I’ve made quite a few movies that use music, but I’ve never come across a movie where the main character actually performs on this scale. What I like about musical scenes is that they become conversational scenes. They become conversations between Rami and the other actors, and between Jimmy and his boyfriend, his lover, his mother, his sister, and his nephew. They became a form of language.
Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge are straight but play gay characters. Is there a problem with a straight man playing a gay role?
I don’t ask people who they’ve slept with, but what I’ve learned is that you never know.
This is the second time that The Man I Love has been exhibited at Cannes. What does that mean to you?
I am an American and have primarily watched, digested, and considered European films as my pioneers, mentors, and educators. I’m very interested in the connection between language and naturalism in European cinema. American cinema is traditionally rooted in theatrical transformation. I think my approach to finding the truth in something is more by discovering its essence than by working to transform it.
Do you read reviews of your own work?
I read reviews, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less avid.
When you actually read a book, do you focus on the positive or negative parts?
Positive reviews can have an even deeper impact on you. Negative reviews touch your heart and make you want to fight back. John Kander of Kander & Ebb is my cousin. He was opening a show and I sent him an email saying, “Break your leg.” He’s 35 years older than me, he’s in a leadership position, and he said, “Fear never leaves.” I was so relieved that the guy who wrote “Cabaret” and “Chicago” and all these great things still scares me. I still get scared when I start something new.
You make very personal indie films that can’t be easily categorized. Is it difficult to make money to produce?
I’m a hustler. I take money seriously. I don’t take money lightly. I don’t expect a lot of money, but I work closely with producers who understand what I need and that gives me the scope to do it. I’m not going to spend below that range, but I also won’t spend above that range. I had to understand that Hollywood had almost nothing to offer me. I needed to work on another system. In 2012, I briefly worked on some studio-related work, but quickly realized it wasn’t for me, and it wasn’t for them either.
What didn’t you like about Hollywood?
Many people worked in unusual ways in the studio system, so it’s not like great work can’t come out of it. But if I try to do something, it can’t be done within a corporate system. Also, major studios don’t make the kind of movies I make: genre-agnostic, domestic dramas about queer people. They literally don’t make up stories like that. And my work is inherently political.
What studio films have you worked on?
I worked on a Montgomery Clift biopic for HBO and an adaptation of a book called “Christodora” at Paramount.
Was it a valuable experience?
No, all I learned from it was what I didn’t want to do.
In what ways is your work political?
I’m a gay man and I primarily make films about gay men. Every time I make a film, I’m subverting the idea of what’s interesting to people. Because the dominant culture tells us that our lives are not interesting. That’s something I refuse to accept.
At last year’s Americana Film Festival, you warned that Donald Trump’s reelection was “bringing darkness to cultural expression.” why?
We no longer have freedom of speech. I’m disappointed. It would be difficult to look at this country and not feel shocked. Everything we thought was constant and important disappears. Films set in repressive regimes adapt in fascinating ways. Look at Spain under Franco or Iran under Mullah rule. They continued to create great art, but they did so by relying on metaphor. That’s something queer films have often attempted. But given the times we live in, it seems like a good time to reconnect with the artists we remember from the East Village who were always brave enough to take risks. No matter what, their work always felt very personal and very free.
